Smart Phone Addiction is Changing the Human Mind, and It’s Not Good

Is the Smart Phone and Social Media altering our brains, our thought patterns, and creating a whole new dependency? A recent study of 19 people has shown signs that yes, the smartphone/social media combination is doing all three of these things. Yes, the study is hardly conclusive as it only looked at 19 people, but the results were startling enough to warrant more follow-up. For those of us that champion complex thoughts and ideas, such as changing the whole paradigm of human governance from coercive enterprise models to free association models, the very tools that enable us to network and share our message may also be undermining our ability to effectively transmit that message.

Researchers found evidence of chemical imbalance in the brains of young people who are addicted to smartphones and internet use. The imbalance ratio was seen to be significantly correlated to addictions, anxiety, and depression……

….Researchers conducted the study on 19 young individuals who were diagnosed with internet or smartphone addiction, and another group of 19 young individuals as the healthy controls. The mean age for both groups is 15.5, and both groups have nine males each. Of the addicted participants, 12 were subjected to cognitive behavioral therapy for their addiction…….

….Researchers also performed a magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to study the brain chemistry of the participants both before and after the cognitive behavioral therapy. They found that compared to the MRS results of the healthy individuals, the ratio of gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) to glutamate-glutamine (Glx) was increased in the brains of the participants with internet or smartphone addiction prior to therapy.

Paul Gordon is the publisher and editor of iState.TV. He has published and edited newspapers, poetry magazines and online weekly magazines.
He is the director of Social Cognito, an SEO/Web Marketing Company. You can reach Paul at pg@istate.tv